A phylogenetic, ontogenetic, and epigenetic view of bio-inspired hardware systems

• Published in: IEEE transactions on evolutionary computation Vol. 1; no. 1; pp. 83 - 97
• Main Authors: Sipper, M., Sanchez, E., Mange, D., Tomassini, M., Perez-Uribe, A., Stauffer, A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.04.1997
• Subjects: Biology; Bridges; Earth; Evolution (biology); Evolutionary computation; Face detection; Genetics; Hardware; Organisms; Phylogeny
• ISSN: 1089-778X; 1941-0026
• DOI: 10.1109/4235.585894

If one considers life on Earth since its very beginning, three levels of organization can be distinguished: the phylogenetic level concerns the temporal evolution of the genetic programs within individuals and species, the ontogenetic level concerns the developmental process of a single multicellular organism, and the epigenetic level concerns the learning processes during an individual organism's lifetime. In analogy to nature, the space of bio-inspired hardware systems can be partitioned along these three axes-phylogeny, ontogeny and epigenesis (POE)-giving rise to the POE model. This paper is an exposition and examination of bio-inspired systems within the POE framework, with our goals being: (1) to present an overview of current-day research, (2) to demonstrate that the POE model can be used to classify bio-inspired systems, and (3) to identify possible directions for future research, derived from a POE outlook. We discuss each of the three axes separately, considering the systems created to date and plotting directions for continued progress along the axis in question.